A new study by researchers from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York reveals that blocking access to television or computer helps young overweight children eat less and lose weight.

The results of the study come to solve a national problem in the United States, where and estimated 16 percent of children aged 6 to 19 years old are overweight, a 45 percent increase in one decade, federal researchers reported.

TV time has been linked to obesity in prior studies, but this is the first to show significant weight loss in children who were cut time spent in front of a screen.

“Television viewing is related to consumption of fast food and foods and beverages that are advertised on television. Viewing cartoons with embedded food commercials can increase choice of the advertised item in preschoolers, and television commercials may prompt eating,” the study authors said in a prepared statement, according to The Washington Post.

The researchers followed 70 children aged between four and seven years old who regularly watched television or played computer games for at least 14 hours a week. All the selected children were in the heaviest quarter of their age group on the body mass index, or BMI. The children were followed over a two-year period.

During the study, half the group were allowed to continue in their old habits, while the other half spent 50 percent of their normal time in front of a screen. How was that possible? Investigators attached a $100 electronic device called the TV Allowance, made by Mindmaster Inc., to their televisions and computers. The device controls the amount of screen users have and was programmed to cut the usual time children used the device by 10 percent. When their allowance of screen time was used up, the TV or computer would not work.

The results of the study were spectacular.

“At the end of the trial, 30 percent of kids (whose screen time was restricted) went from overweight to not being overweight. In the control group, only 18 percent did,” Leonard Epstein of the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, lead-author said in the study.

The weight loss was not related to more exercising, but to the fact that children snacked less, lowering their consumption more than 100 calories a day, which means one sugar-sweetened beverage a day, according to an accompanying editorial by Steven Gortmaker, a health-sociology professor who researches obesity at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The TV Allowance also helps parents who cannot control their children while they are at work.

“Using technology to modify television viewing eliminates parental vigilance needed to enforce family rules and reduces the disciplinary action needed if a child exceeds his or her sedentary behavior limits. Perhaps most important, the device puts the choice of when to watch television in the child's control, as opposed to a rule such as ‘no television time until homework is completed,’” the researchers concluded.

Randal Levenson, the president of Mindmaster and inventor of the TV Allowance created the device in 1991 as a way to control the amount of time his kids spent in front of the television. And it worked, he said, with thousands of the devices being sold each year across the country.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children aged two and older should not have more two hours of television or computer time each day. Younger children should have none. This is not what the reality shows. Previous studies reveal that children spend 50 percent or more time than recommended in front of television and computer screens.

The study, supported by a grant from the National Institutes and Digestive Diseases and by the Behavioral Medicine Laboratory of the State University of New York at Buffalo, was published in the March edition of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.